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Patrick Grey

Web developer, e‑learning specialist & master of disguise

Tagged "reading"

  7. Building Websites With LLMS
    Using just HTML links and CSS page transitions to replace intra page interactions. Looks very good for list filtering. My heart wants to go all in on this but requiring Javascript (JS) to return to your previous location doesn't sit well with me. Progressively enhanced JS interactions in page give you an option if JS is broken. This approach breaks if JS breaks. Clicking the close button on navigation if JS is broken, for example, takes you back to the home page, not the page you were. You could fix the menu by generating a navigation page for each post with the correct back link.... millions of pages 😅
    1. reading

  8. Strong Opinions on URL Design
    Good advice on URL design. I would like to change mine but I feel stuck with it as posts are published. Must look into redirects... I added the date to my posts, not as subfolders but in the title. I like seeing dates on things to know how contemporary it is. However, I think this has made my posts too long and the dates will appear in the articles anyway. I might shorten my filenames instead of just copying the full title too.
    1. reading

  9. Leaving 18F
    US federal workers drawing lines they will not cross. Resistance under a fascist advance.
    1. reading

  10. DOGE procurement capture
    A likely explanation of the real purpose of DOGE. Always ingesting how authoritarianism and corruption go hand in hand.
    1. reading

  14. Things we learned about LLMs in 2024
    This is an expert and fair review of the LLM domain to date. It notes the advances and cautions about consequences. As noted, they are getting more efficient but data centres continue to be built with massive environmental impact. Despite the efficiencies, I suspect this will be like widening motorways: adding more lanes encourages more traffic. I think the main problem will remain something that wasn't mentioned here. The organisations behind this tech are mostly bad actor acolyte's of unfettered capitlaism. Profit without regard to humans. We've seen this before. That and missing Government regulation. And here is where the big profit is: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/07/uk-government-ai-military-drones-faculty-ai-artificial-intelligence. The only regulation the UK government has proposed so far is to excuse LLMs from copyright law.
    1. reading

  16. Front-end development’s identity crisis
    Elly does a great job of outlining the difficulties in answering the job title question, "What do I call myself"? The question helps to illustrate some of the problems endemic in the tech industry today. I think this article came out when more and more people were starting realise the issues that React was creating. Since then, I think the movement has only got stronger. The article ends on why "Web designer" is a good title. The job description list from Brad Frosts linked article is great.
    1. reading

  20. What is Utility-First CSS?
    "It turns out, people in tech are particularly bad at distinguishing between paradigm shifts and paradigm sharts." Just chef's kiss. Why Utility-first is such a problem.
    1. reading

  21. The Static Site Paradox
    "...only few professional software engineers can “afford” to have the second option [simple HTML and CSS sites] as their personal website, and almost all normal users are stuck with overcomplicated solutions". Great point also about lawyer and accountant domains gatekeeping with uneccessary complexity. ALSO, the web is more interesting when it's accessible to those who are NOT web devs.
    1. reading

  25. Burned by My Own Hot Take
    A great piece of self-reflection. Overly harsh on themselves I think in terms of accepting unnecessary personal critisism (that's not a critisism ;-) Tyler extracts a very positive point on the best way to present problem issues with web dev - show the positives in alternatives or just list the problems without comment.
    1. reading

  30. The blockquote element
    I think the official HTML documentation should be written like this. Heavily focused on accessibility and super massively practical in terms of using elements. And funny.
    1. reading

  42. Varyag degrees of success
    To lose a ship once, as Wilde nearly suggested, may be regarded as misfortune. To lose the same ship twice begins to look like carelessness...
    1. reading

  45. Hippy, capitalist, guru, grocer: the forgotten genius who changed British food
    Saunders was obsessed with documenting how the new global counterculture was changing the ancient city around him. In 1970, at the age of 32, he self-published his findings in a slim but dense guidebook called Alternative London. The book was testament to Saunders’ belief that information should be made available to all, and that this information should be rigorously tested.
    1. reading

  50. Solace from the machine
    A personal story of a very rough childhood and how the early days of software and the internet saved him. I remember those early days.
    1. reading

  51. How Lego builds a new Lego set
    I love lego and the Polaroid camera is an icon design so I was interested in the combined topics. Something as seemingly simple as a lego kit has to go through multiple teams and processes.
    1. reading

  53. The Good, The Bad, and The Web Components - Zach Leatherman | JSHeroes 2023
    This explains WebC nicely for me! Zach notes the problem where if you add HTML inside the web component, either light or shadow DOM, you end up repeating all of that templating each time you use it. The solution is to have one template that can be reused by multiple custom elements. Under WCAG disucssion. WebC treats web compontents as first party SSR rendering.
    1. reading

  54. HTML Web Components are Just JavaScript?
    Miriam explores how to integrate current HTML Web Components (HWC) into her workflow. I didn't understand some of the practical implementation issues as I need to try practical examples for myself. Notes that HWC aren't DRY yet, something Zach Leatherman also notes.
    1. reading

  55. HTML web components
    A summary of much of the writing around web components noting that a mindset of augmentation is needed over the idea of replacement React encouraged.
    1. reading

  56. Blinded By the Light DOM
    A practical look at using web compontents on an HTML first basis, with examples. This approach avoids templates, slots and the shadow DOM and instead enhances HTML inside the compontent with efficientyl run JavaScript...
    1. reading

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